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The document says that maximum would be allowed in dry and critically dry years, and up to 360,000 acre-feet during other years through 2024.

One of the alternatives in the plan is to not farm land in Northern California. "How about some crop idling in the area of (water) demand," Vlamis said.

Recent rules by the State Water Resources Control Board require local groups to create sustainable water budgets by 2022. Robyn DiFalco, director of the Butte Environmental Council (www.becnet.org) said it "seems clear the San Joaquin Valley proposes to balance their water budget with Sacramento Valley water."

However, the government has bypassed this potentially costly step by edging through a legal loophole, according to critics.

“They’re calling it a one-year water transfer, instead of a long-term project, and that allows them to skip the CEQA guidelines,” explained Robyn DiFalco, executive director of the Butte Environmental Council. “Now, we’re seeing multiple one-year transfers, year after year, without environmental review.” Brobeck at AquAlliance confirms the same—that the federal and state applicants are skirting environmental laws and essentially stealing Northern California’s water. “They just keep delaying the environmental review, which allows them to operate on a year-by-year basis,” Brobeck said.

Vlamis, of AquAlliance, echoed him. She said that calling the BDCP a “conservation plan” is deceptive. “The way this plan is crafted it will have no benefits for the Sacramento’s ecosystem,” she said.

Many critics of the BDCP have described the tunnels as a means of transferring away the wealth of Northern California to powerful water agencies to the south, which will be paying for a great deal of their enormous cost.

DiFalco, at the Butte Environmental Council, says the conscious choices of farmers in the San Joaquin Valley have brought troubles upon themselves and the rest of the state.

“They’re planting permanent crops, like fruit orchards, in a desert,” she said. “Annual crops would make sense. That way you can fallow the land—grow when you’re able to and let the land go fallow in dry years. But they’re being foolhardy. They’re setting themselves up to need more water every year, and we shouldn’t sympathize with them for consciously making these decisions. “We need to retire some of that land,” she said.

By some opinions, the BDCP and its tunnels are just a scheme of selling away Northern California’s wealth, and losing an ecosystem in the process.

People who are "inspired and want to learn more can keep coming to workshops. Those people can grow in their level of experience and understanding," she said. Other events include an eye-level tour of the delta, a gray water demonstration by homeowner Tim Elliott showcasing a washing-machine-to-garden system, and Nani Teves explaining a rain barrel water catchment system. To watch for these events, bookmark: http://www.becnet.org/code-blue-2013-water-outreach-campaign.

Music to help BEC To fundraise for its advocacy efforts, BEC is hosting a Land Air Water benefit concert series. The series starts at 7:30 p.m. Sept. 27 at the GRUB Cooperative, 1525 Dayton Road. The show starts with John Craigie, Pat Hull and Scott Itamura. Wiskerman and Low Flying Birds will play at the Chico Women's Club on Oct. 24, and Bumpet also will play at the club Nov. 14. Cost is $15 per show at Chico Natural Foods, Empire Coffee, the BEC office and www.becnet.org, and $17 at the door.

Paul Gosselin, executive director of the county Department of Water, said the county will push to ensure regional water rights are protected, and to avoid "dead pool" conditions in Lake Oroville. Economic impacts to this area are another strong concern, he said.

Nani Teves, of Butte Environmental Council, said the plan to "increasingly export water from the north" will "transfer environmental and economic damage north, but puts the existing water supply for the entire state at risk."

Perkins studied the potential impacts the proposition, including the construction of Sites Reservoir, would have on Northern California groundwater resources.

Above-ground storage facilities do not offer much in the way of new water, her study notes, though Sites could increase the existing supply by 1 percent. On the other hand, at least 30 percent of the surface water in the state is known to evaporate or be lost to infiltration back into the ground, which means “groundwater storage will be the ‘wave’ of the future.”

She said $520 million would be allocated for organizations to compete for clean-water and waste-water infrastructure projects. “That money would be set aside for competitive grants,” Perkins said, “which means it goes to the savvy, well-funded organizations instead of the smaller communities without county or district water departments.

Perkins said the bond also provides hundreds of millions for water conservancies, and that those monies would not be dispersed on a level plane. For instance, she noted the conservancy in L.A. County’s Baldwin Park would receive $10 million for its 2,038 acres of land, which equates to $4,906 per acre. On the other hand, the Sierra Nevada Conservancy, which provides 60 percent of the state’s water supply, would receive $25 million for its 42 million acres, or 59 cents per acre. “Los Angeles is getting a lot of money and so [statewide] environmental organizations like the Audubon Society and the Nature Conservancy are for [Prop. 1] because it means more money for them,” Perkins said. “We’ve had $20 billion set aside in taxes and interest since 2000 and we still have water problems. The money gets put aside, but is not being spent where it needs to be spent.”